An early attempt to make the best complete food ever, Xiao Long Bao. A great effort wasn't made to make an exact filling so far. The goal was to try to get a skin that was thin enough and pliable enough to hold the filling and the soup. Also, we needed to develop the skills to form these little gems. We didn't have any pork skin to make the gelatinous soup so we substituted the jus that we always get whenever we make duck confit. It always proves to be wildly flavorful and highly gelatinous. We eyeballed the ground pork, seasonings and the amount of the duck jus. We will become more exacting at a later date.

The dough was our priority right now. After trying several recipes, a traditional hot water dough produced the best results. My skills at rolling the dough into thin enough disks proved to be the next challenge. Once the pleats were formed the dough at the top was always too thick. In the restaurant we make a lot of pasta dough so I thought we'd play with the pasta machine. This rolled out beautiful sheets of the dough which were then cut with a cookie cutter.

A word to the wise, be careful with the water level of your steaming a liquid. While surfing the web, my steaming water dried up and set the steamer ablaze. Ooops!